Our Portfolio

Seabags recycles used sails into exciting tote bags and accessories. We have implemented a development, to staging, to production workflow for Seabags using git. In addition we wrote an Amazon product feed for them to enable their unique products to be sold on Amazon.

Seabags

Seabags recycles used sails into exciting tote bags and accessories. We have implemented a development, to staging, to production workflow for Seabags using git. In addition we wrote an Amazon product feed for them to enable their unique products to be sold on Amazon. We are engaged as an advisor to their in-house technical resource to help with Magento issues.

We delivered an updated home page design that allows GroundSpark to manage more of their own content while also making the site more friendly to readers. We wrote an update to their existing WordPress theme keeping the update costs within their budget.

GroundSpark

GroundSpark is a non-profit that¬†creates visionary films and dynamic educational campaigns that move individuals and communities to take action for a more just world. They wanted an update to their home page. The old home page way very busy and becoming harder to maintain.

To keep the development costs down, GroundSpark also wanted to leverage their existing WordPress theme as much as possible. We developed several design candidates for them that showed a greatly simplified home page while still offering the most important parts of their message. Once we agreed on a design, we write an updated theme that not only simplified the home page, but also integrated with other existing page templates. Finally this new theme removed much of the hard coding that limited GroundSpark’s ability to make content and menu changes. The ¬†updated theme allows their staff to make any change to the menus and the home page content much more easily.

NapaStyle is on on-line retailer of high end kitchen and home decor items. They engaged us when their in-house technical support person left the company and we took over maintenance of their site. In addition, we helped them transition to a Magento based site and have become their sole in-house development resource.

NapaStyle

NapaStyle is on on-line retailer of high end kitchen and home decor items. They engaged us when their in-house technical support person left the company and we took over maintenance of ¬†their site. Initially we helped them with content updates. However, as they were transitioning to a Magento based site we implemented numerous code changes to their site.

Some of the project we completed include installing a shopping feed for both Google and Amazon. We added several remarketing tags throughout the site. We’ve implemented solutions to enable NapaStyle to update their own content and schedule content and promotions.

We enhanced the customer interaction and made administration much easier for San Francisco Gourmet Gifts. We trained their staff on how to make the most fro their Magento installation. We streamlined their shipping process and added special shipping rules for wine and perishable items.

San Francisco Gourmet Gifts

San Francisco Gourmet Gifts specializes in shipping the taste of California all over the country. They’re business is highly seasonal and they were looking for some significant enhancements to their existing Magento installation. We enhanced their site so that the customer experience was much easier by ensuring that items containing wine could only be shipped to jurisdictions that would allow alcohol shipments. We make the customer shopping experience easier by coding shipping rules for perishable items so that customers knew how and when such items could be shipped. We created several custom automated interfaces between their supplier and their Magento installation to remove much manual word required for ordering and shipping administration.

We also trained their support staff so that they could make many of their catalog and content changes on their own and not need the time and expense of technical support for simple content changes.

We invited StudioMoon to focus on what they wanted - not what they thought they could have. We then wrote a custom WordPress theme to their exact design specification.

StudioMoon

SutdioMoon, a San Francisco corporate identity agency, was looking to replace their old Flash based website. They wanted a site that would not only showcase their work, but would also be a design destination itself.

Their design specification were detailed and exact. Although they had worked with WordPress before, they weren’t sure that their detailed design specifications would work in WordPress. During our design meetings we kept noticing that they were imposing limits on what they were asking for because they thought WordPress wouldn’t be able to do exactly what they wanted.

We asked them to focus on the design what they wanted – not what they thought they could have. They then came up with a design that not only showcased their design expertise, but also allowed them to show their entire portfolio of ¬†brand and product identity work. We then went to work taking their design specs and translating them into WordPress requirements. For example, jumped into action and developed a new WordPress post type for their clients; each client would have multiple logos, products, print items, digital designs and other identity elements. We then built the functionality in a WordPress custom theme to tie all these disparate design elements together in a clear cohesive presentation to make their portfolio shine!

We helped one of California's largest food banks clarify their message. This newly clarified message was used as the basis for a new, easy to use website. Their new site helps their volunteers focus on their core mission rather than spending time wrestling with the technology.

Alameda County Community Food Bank

The Alameda County Food Bank is one of the largest community food banks in California. They distribute enough food for over 380,000 meals each week though their large warehouse in Oakland. Their old site, like many sites we’ve seen, was the victim of so many addons over the years that the site was difficult to navigate and difficult to update.

Clients couldn’t find the information they were looking for. Donors had trouble finding how to donate or volunteer. The site lacked personality and client stories and successes were lost in the confusion.

Ed has been working with¬†Taproot¬†as a pro bono tech developer. He was the account director for this project – having complete responsibility for managing the project and ensuring that the delivered site met the food bank’s needs. The team clarified the food bank’s message and used this simplified message as the basis for the new site.

The food bank was very happy with the final deliverable and commented on Ed’s ability to keep the project on track and explain options in a clear and concise way for non-technical people.

The delivered website uses WordPress and many custom features that allow the food bank staff to keep the site fresh and current. The staff finds the new site easy to administer and update. Also, the clients and donors have commented how easy it is to find what they’re looking for on the new site.

We developed a new website for The Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula that not only showcases member creativity but also makes it easy to see upcoming events and news as well as making it easy to donate.

Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula

The Boys & Girls Club of the Peninsula helps underserved youth of Silicon Valley help themselves by providing¬†social and academic programs. Their old site was purely html and required technical assistance every time they wanted to make an update. Since all content had to be updated by their sole IT support person and the process was rather long and complicated, the backlog of¬†updates was getting larger and it was getting very difficult to keep the site current and relevant.

The site was old and wouldn’t easily show member created videos. The young people benefiting from the Club were using some of the latest technology to show their creative energies yet their site couldn’t show these amazing creative works. The dated site was starting to impact donations since it was difficult for the public to donate to the Clubs. Comments from the public made it clear that the old site was difficult to navigate and difficult to find more information about upcoming events.

Working with their designer, we built a custom WordPress site that allows the Club staff to update the site often with fresh content. The elements on the homepage can be easily updated via the standard WordPress back end. Member creative projects can be showcased on the site and shared with the public. Potential volunteers and job applicants can easily see what opportunities are available with an integrated volunteer and job¬†opening¬†listing.

We integrated a secure donation section do that the public can easily, quickly and securely give by credit card.

The Club management team wanted this site up within a very short timeframe of six weeks and we were able to deliver their new site within this aggressive schedule.

We delivered a website for Alice James Books, a poetry publisher, that showcases their entire catalog - including a complete cross reference by author and similar works. We also built a custom bookstore that makes both the customer shopping experience as well as store maintenance very easy.

Alice James Books

Alice James Books is a poetry publisher. Their staff was spending way too much time wrangling with their old site. Updates were incredibly difficult and maintaining a web store was so time consuming that they were losing sales.¬†The biggest problem with their old site was that it was extremely cumbersome to add new titles and show all the titles by a particular author. We used the¬†flexibility¬†of WordPress to not only make adding and updating titles easy, but to also ensure that all titles from each of their many authors were easily found and cross indexed.

The publisher already had their entire catalog available on PayPal and they wanted to keep PayPal as their payment processor. We built a custom PayPal solution and integrated that store into WordPress so that they can easily update the catalog themselves. The bookstore allows the staff to assign titles to several categories just like a physical bookstore. This allows their fans to find titles that are similar to works they already enjoy!

The homepage features recent titles with a link to the entire catalog. Each title features recent literary reviews, a selected sample poem, a press kit and a link to a page about each author.

We developed a powerful WordPress site for a school principal to use lessons from the playground to reflect on lessons for adults. We developed animation to balance the playfulness of the child characters with the power of important lessons intended for adults.

Principal John

Principal John is a place to look how the lessons from children’s playgrounds can inspire adult leaders – not only in education but in many other fields. The site reflects the playful energy of the playground while also keeping a clean and simple look that allows readers to focus on the content. We used animation on the home page to communicate the dual message of children’s play with important adult life lessons. We furthered this playground metaphor by using playground graphics throughout the site. For example, the community discussion area uses a four square design.

The site owner wanted very specific designs and motifs used and was told by many that his ideas would require an expensive site with a lot of custom coding. We showed the site owner how an open source tool like WordPress can be use as the foundation for a very powerful and specific site such as this one.

We helped a group of dedicated yoga teachers with a new, custom WordPress site to publicize their classes. Our easily understood approach enabled all the instructors to master maintenance of their site and the calendar of classes all around the San Francisco area.

Naked Yoga for Men

Naked Yoga for Men provides a space for men to come together and connect spiritually, mentally and physically in a non-sexual setting to practice yoga.¬†The teachers were having a challenge updating their old site to publicize their classes. They also needed a rolling calendar of events so yoga practitioners could easily find classes in their area.

The teachers wanted their site to be open and reflective of the spirit they bring to their classes and events. We built a WordPress based site that shows the energy and spirit of the practice yet is also easily navigated so that readers can quickly find upcoming classes and events.

We listened to the instructors describe the feelings and emotions they wanted to convey through the site and translated these feelings into workable designs. We explained the tradeoffs of the various designs and features so that they could easily see the pros and cons of every option.

The community feedback on the new site was uniformly positive. Those attending classes were able to see which instructor was leading which class and helped attract more attendees to their classes and special events.

We wrote a complete redesign of this very popular, constantly updated website to make it much more reader friendly and showcase their reviews and events. Our work was performed so that there was absolutely no impact on their important work and our new code was much more reliable than what they used previously.

Lambda Literary Foundation

The Lambda Literary Foundation nurtures, celebrates and preserves LGBT literature through programs that honor excellence, promote visibility and encourage development of emerging writers.

Their website was a traditional blog that was outgrowing its usefulness. It was hard to navigate, hard to maintain and hard to find relevant reviews. We guided Lambda Literary through a complete redesign process to update their site from a hard to navigate blog into an easy to read magazine format. This new format make the site easier to use and gave it a much cleaner look and feel. In addition since this site is updated with new content multiple times per day, we added several innovative features to make it easy for the staff at Lambda Literary to update the site and post new articles.

The new site features a custom developed slider that allows readers to slide through the most recent articles along with cleaner navigation to easily find articles in popular categories – like a newspaper or magazine. We also integrated the site with Facebook and allow commenters to login with either their site id or their Facebook id.

This non-profit was in need of a clear message; their existing site lacked a clear vision. Not only did we build an awesome website, but we also led a top down organizational review that removed the confusion and resulted in four easy words summarizing a very clear vision. These four words formed the basis for their new site.

Stagebridge

Ed has been working with Taproot as a pro bono tech developer. He was the technical project manager and a lead developer¬†on a team that recently completed a website for Stagebridge.¬†Stagebridge is a non-profit that is transforming how people view and experience aging. They were looking for a new website.

The new site was to be used as a way to communicate the passion that Stagebridge has in helping seniors live complete and satisfying lives. The new site was to be lively, informative and energizing.

The existing website was not well organized and it was difficult to find what a reader wanted. Rather then start this project redesigning the site, Ed suggested that the organization take a step back and look at their vision and mission. This vision and mission could then become the basis for a new site.

A website is a vehicle to deliver a message. If the original message isn’t clear there’s no way the site will be clear. So we focused on developing the short elevator speech with Stagebridge. We brainstormed on what they do to relentlessly focus on a small number of core, easy to understand messages. We came up with four: see, play, transform and learn. These four words became the basis for the new site.

By using WordPress as our website development environment, we were able to let Stagebridge concentrate on their content and refine their message while we efficiently developed the new site.

The new site used these four core areas to fully express their message. The site was built entirely in WordPress and delivered in a very short time frame. In fact, the majority of the time of this project was business brainstorming rather than technical design.

We developed a series of custom WordPress sites to securely house client identity assets. The sites are secured to keep unauthorized persons out while also being easy for the identity studio to administer and manage their clients' brand assets.

StudioMoon StyleSites

StudioMoon, an identity design firm in San Francisco, hired us to develop several WordPress sites. These sites, referred to as StyleSites, are an online graphic standards guide that covers many important aspects of the client‚Äôs identity and makes it easy to download art on an as-needed basis. These sites are used to transfer important information and files to key vendors, educate and train new employees, stay up to date on any changes to the company‚Äôs visual image, and help their client better understand the ‚Äúvisual spirit‚ÄĚ of the company.

StudioMoon wanted to use WordPress to develop the sites and had very specific requirements on the site structure and design. One of the requirements was a distinct navigation system consisting of a horizontal main menu and vertical sub menus. When a user selects on a main menu item, the corresponding sub menu will open in the left column. We built this customized navigation system leveraging native WordPress navigation functions. This allows StudioMoon to easily change the navigation as needed while also leveraging their knowledge of WordPress. The code we developed is entirely compatible with WordPress therefore, the sites can be easily updates as new versions of WordPress are released.

Since the client is focused on graphic design elements, they had very specific requirements on the layout of the pages. We ensured that the page layout was exactly what our client wanted. When there were differences between what was feasible on print and the web, we showed the client various options and the noted the advantages and disadvantages of each option.

By leveraging the power of WordPress, we were able to quickly and easily develop customized similar sites for many of StudioMoon’s clients.

We also helped StudioMoon develop their Artvault site. This site will be used as a central repository for many of their clients. Since it will house digital assets for many clients, authentication and security was paramount. Each client should only be able to work with their own assets – not the art StudioMoon developed for other clients. We leveraged the existing stylesite theme we already built and added security features so each client was only able to access their own pages. We¬†enhanced¬†the standard WordPress navigation to only show the menus that each client could access while allowing StudioMoon to easily see all their clients artwork.

We developed an easy to manage site for a non-profit startup. This site has not only helped them spread the word about their mission, but has been instrumental in bringing some large donations to help them get started!

Keoni Movement Arts

Keoni Movement Arts is a startup non-profit in New York City where people with limited means and encouragement can come and learn movement art forms. They are passionate about providing an affordable venue whereby people who have a deep desire to learn yoga, gymnastics and movement can come and do so.

We built a site for quickly to their specifications and delivered it in plenty of time for their startup fundraising drive. The WordPress based site allow their volunteers to update their text and graphics but also maintain their extensive calendar of community events.

In addition to the website, we showed them how to use email marketing to enhance their fundraising efforts and also integrated this marketing system into their website. We trained their creative volunteers in how to edit the digital assets to make powerful visual statements that are also web friendly.

We developed a complete web store solution that integrates seamlessly into their existing site. Our solution leveraged their existing payment processor in order to keep transaction fees low. We trained the staff how to manage the catalog, inventory and shipping.

Playland Not At The Beach

Playland Not At the Beach¬†is a museum of fun celebrating amusement parks of a bygone era. Playland features loads of working amusements and they’re open for the public and for special parties for adults and children. Playland features a complete catalog of amusement souvenirs as well as one of a kind collectibles and valuable antiques. They were in need of a feature rich web store platform to sell souvenirs and memorabilia to collectors all over the world.

We delivered a full web store feature in just a few weeks using a widely supported open source platform. The web store was seamlessly integrated into the look and feel of their existing web site.¬†In addition, we trained Playland’s staff to use the store to fulfill orders and add and modify catalog items so that they’re pretty much self sufficient.

The web store has exceeded their expectations and is allowing them to make kids of all ages happy while simultaneously expanding their mission around the world.

We quickly developed a custom site to detailed design specifications in plenty of time for a major presentation. The new site saves them a lot of costs by allowing the business owner to make his own content changes without any technical support.

Elemental Partners

Kevin Fong, President of¬†Elemental Partners¬†a business adviser to hundreds of organizations, came to us frustrated that his existing web developer was changing him for content changes. He wanted an easy way to add and modify content on his site. He was also looking for a fast turnaround time; he was preparing for a conference presentation and wanted his new site up and running in time for this presentation.

We showed how WordPress would separate his content from the technical structure of his site so that he could go in and add, modify or delete his content any time he wanted without needing technical support. Kevin now has full control over his content. Further, we were able to accommodate Kevin’s design requirements by customizing WordPress to meet his design specifications.

We completed this assignment and trained Kevin how to leverage his new site with plenty of time for him to showcase his new site at his presentation!